I want a poem which is made of compression, passion, precision, symmetry, & disruption.

I wanted many of the poems to have long legs. At first I was calling them clothespin poems, before I knew what I was doing. The lines seem pulled on either end, tight and taut against the wind.

I want a poem which is made of compression, passion, precision, symmetry, & disruption.

I think American is very democratic in allowing different hues of language and parts of speech to commingle. William Logan once wrote that I had something of a fetish for what he called "Haute Couture Vulgarity."

Every thing is changing every minute.

Let me just say that the politics that I have are never the politics of poetics. I am not interested in politics. Politically, I am only very conscious of how we live and what we do right and what we do so awfully wrong.

That's what interests me in poetry. That withholding, that white space, the pressure, and my long-term faith in violent concision, is still with me.